Anyone catch the live coverage from the NASCAR race today?
Her rear suspension was broken, in the lead, trying to hold off Jacques, live audio from the cockpit to pits.
What a hoot, I LOVED it.
The commentators could only apologize ;)
Next week: Danica learns how to use Skoal.
Carter
yeah I heard that ... thought it was great ...
now I'll try to get everyone fired up ....
hey Jacques ... ain't karma a bitch ?.. too bad there wasn't another gwc... then you could have finished just about where I was hoping you would 
Wow. Done in by a flying sneaker, of all things!
might not be that ... at least not totally ... she told crew chief she hit a curb extremely hard during qualifying ... could easily have resulted from that ( with a little bit of shoe thrown in for good measure )
I can't stand it. I really don't care about NASCAR but the headline popped up on Yahoo, "Danica hits a shoe." Last week it was "Danica crashes on the first lap". The shoe story was quick to say she finished 26th and to recap her crash of last week but didn't even say who actually won the race. I know this kind of coverage drove the Indy car guys nuts. The big egos in NASCAR have to be going Berkeleying nuts.
Argo1 wrote: The big egos in NASCAR have to be going Berkeleying nuts.
Focus is almost always on the negative. I'd appreciate being left out of the conversation from time-to-time.
i caught the last 12 laps or so. i wanted to like it since it was on a road course, but boy what a clusterberkeley. intentionally spinning someone to take their position is bullE36 M3 IMO and now i will go back to NOT watching nascrap.
danica led for 20 laps, which i think is cool.
Jacques is such an shiny happy person, it was good to see him be the victim of wheel hop. The intentionally turning Tagliani was absolutely ridiculous. I was hoping he would run out of gas too before the end of the race. He was driving like a jackass in Aussie V8 Supercars last week too and its hard to stand out as an aggressive driver in that series. He is a scumbag.
The Danica hate is crazy. She has been involved in alot of things that were not her fault this season. I think that she may have screwed up her car in qualifying and then the shoe finished it off. So, in all honesty, this was probably of her own doing being rough on the equipment regardless of the shoe. But, the bracket came off her car within a lap or two.
And for the record, who throws a berkeleying shoe on the race track? Really Canada, really?
There was a video I saw during the race that Elliot Sadler was talking about Jacques and how he doesn't really care about who he hits as long as he gets the win that week. He doesn't have to race in the series every week. Elliot described it perfectly.
they showed a clip of Tony Stewart talking about what it's like being in the world of Danica.. he said people need to just leave her the hell alone, let her learn, and stop always talking about her... Tony is her Sprint Cup car owner..
regarding the race- just watched it on the dvr.. i thought she did pretty damn good, right up until her car started falling apart- and even after that she held the lead for a few laps before it became unmanageable..
that Jacque character needs to just get dumped hard right as he takes the green flag on lap one by one of the start and park teams, and then by a successive line of back markers every time he tries to get back on the track- i'm thinking of a NASCAR version of the the scene in the movie "Airplane!" where everyone lines up to slap the hysterical woman here... i thought it was funny after the race when he finally ran out of gas, and he gets out of the car and starts walking away and the track workers yell at him to get the berkeley back in his car so the truck that was pulling up behind it could push him back to the pits..
There's a bit more. Another vid shows something coming out of the rear of Danica's car, it turned out to be a pinion angle wedge. The pit crew fixed it by retorquing the U bolts. But what that means is that after the wedge came out, there was a bunch of racket from the rear of the car which may have made her think the rear axle was basically sort of floating loose.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IbQ8CKs3A7M
Right at 0.27 into the video, on the next lap after the shoe, going into turn 1 you can see the rear end was floating already. Not like a track bar snapping, but it was floating right there for sure. I noticed that yesterday when watching it live and listening to the idiot announcers trying to figure out what was going on for like 3 laps after that.
I'm thinking the track bar is similar to the torque tube axle setup, am I right? I base that on the announcer saying the shim was there to correct the pinion angle. If so, I would venture to guess that a loose track bar could cause all sorts of rear axle weirdness.
I believe it is more of a hotchkiss or semi hotchkiss drive. The track bar is the same as a panhard bar. It is a very simple rearend.
Edit: I was wrong about wedge. Its just for weight transfer.
I was wondering about that.
I couldn't see, with the truck arm set up, why they would need a pinion wedge. Maybe two.
Curmudgeon wrote: I'm thinking the track bar is similar to the torque tube axle setup, am I right? I base that on the announcer saying the shim was there to correct the pinion angle. If so, I would venture to guess that a loose track bar could cause all sorts of rear axle weirdness.
"track bar" is NASCAR for "panhard bar".. they break a few of them on any given weekend when they are on road courses due to them jumping over curbs and what not, and when a track bar mount breaks the rear axle can move about 6" either direction from center.
the wedge that fell out of Danica's car goes between the axle and the truck arm to set the pinion angle.
"what is a truck arm", you ask? it's the lower suspension links that bolt to the rear axle at a fixed angle and to the chassis up in the area of the transmission crossmember.. they are called "truck arms" because they were installed in Chevy 1/2 ton trucks in the 60's and early 70's and someone somewhere decided that they would work good in a stock car, and they are still used today. in fact, i was just looking at a Dale Earnhadrt Jr show car at a county fair today- the nice National Guard guy that was standing there watching over it said Jr raced that very car last year- and the truck arms under that car looked like someone pulled them off a 45 year old truck in the junkyard, only shiny and new.
here is a pic of a street "truck arm" suspension under a G body that is pretty much the same as what the NASCAR boys run in the 3 top series. the wedge that came out of Danica's car is held in place by that single big U bolt that holds the axle to the arm.
Okay, makes sense. A Hotchkiss uses those wedges under the axle in the same place and for he same reason, only with a leaf spring. If the wedge fell out that means the axle was able to work back and forth on the arm on one side, making for a helluva case of 'rear steer'. No wonder she hollered 'steering's %$#*&^d'.
We never lost a wedge or spacer but I wondered why we didn't make them so the u bolt passed through them. I guess I was on to something.
I know everyone knocks the "truck arm" suspension but there is a reason they are still in use... they work. The length of the arm helps to provide "lift" and plant the rear suspension, when you are trying to put 850hp into a 10" wide tire on a 3400lb machine you do not want a fidgety IRS shaking your nuts loose.
The design of a framing hammer hasn't changed since the 1970's either, but the guy building your house doesn't care about that one bit.
John Brown wrote: I know everyone knocks the "truck arm" suspension but there is a reason they are still in use... they work. The length of the arm helps to provide "lift" and plant the rear suspension, when you are trying to put 850hp into a 10" wide tire on a 3400lb machine you do not want a fidgety IRS shaking your nuts loose. The design of a framing hammer hasn't changed since the 1970's either, but the guy building your house doesn't care about that one bit.
the framing hammer is actually a good example.. there are about a thousand different variations on them- some that cost a lot of money and are made out of exotic materials- but a well designed basic $20 hammer will do the job the best.
but NASCAR mandates the truck arms because they are easy to tech and parts are cheap- a brand new arm costs something like $100.
i wonder if the guy that forgot to tighten the u bolt has gotten a stern talking to? she was pretty much dominating the race until the car fell apart under her..
novaderrik wrote: i wonder if the guy that forgot to tighten the u bolt has gotten a stern talking to? she was pretty much dominating the race until the car fell apart under her..
Isn't that something you'd normally safety-wire? I mean, you're never going to change those arms during a race, right?
stroker wrote:novaderrik wrote: i wonder if the guy that forgot to tighten the u bolt has gotten a stern talking to? she was pretty much dominating the race until the car fell apart under her..Isn't that something you'd normally safety-wire? I mean, you're never going to change those arms during a race, right?
how do you go about putting safety wire thru a nut on a u bolt that is made extra long to allow for spacers and shims of varying thicknesses? i'm sure they will add those u bolts to their pre-race checklist and keep a little red loctite handy from here on out..
In reply to novaderrik:
Castle nut and a line of holes up the bolt.
MrJoshua wrote: In reply to novaderrik: Castle nut and a line of holes up the bolt.
on a u bolt that supports all the weight and takes all the abuse that goes into the car via the rear suspension? there is only one u bolt per side...
i'm thinking NASCAR might frown on that- they still make the teams use iron brake rotor hats and steel wheels for safety..
novaderrik wrote:MrJoshua wrote: In reply to novaderrik: Castle nut and a line of holes up the bolt.on a u bolt that supports all the weight and takes all the abuse that goes into the car via the rear suspension? there is only one u bolt per side... i'm thinking NASCAR might frown on that- they still make the teams use iron brake rotor hats and steel wheels for safety..
Safety wire isn't how I would handle it, but saying it can't be done is silly. There are load bearing structures that are full of holes all over a car. Don't just drill holes in the existing U-bolt, design a bolt that won't fail with the holes present and it will be fine.
novaderrik wrote:stroker wrote:how do you go about putting safety wire thru a nut on a u bolt that is made extra long to allow for spacers and shims of varying thicknesses? i'm sure they will add those u bolts to their pre-race checklist and keep a little red loctite handy from here on out..novaderrik wrote: i wonder if the guy that forgot to tighten the u bolt has gotten a stern talking to? she was pretty much dominating the race until the car fell apart under her..Isn't that something you'd normally safety-wire? I mean, you're never going to change those arms during a race, right?
Drill a hole through the corner of the bolt 'hex'. Pegasus etc even sell a cool little alignment jig for that.
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